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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



.1 AY 19 



THE 

FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN, 

/' 

By HELEN EKIN STARRETT; 



MEN, WOMEN, AND MONEY 



By FRANCES EKIN ALLISON. 



1 



1 






CHICAGO: 
JANSEN, McCLURG, AND COMPANY. 

1885. 



B 



Ay 






h^ 



Copyright 

By JANSEN, McCLURG, AND CO.. 

A.D. 1885. 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

OUE FATHEE, 

THE LATE REV. JOHN EKIN, D.D., 

WHO, MORE THAN A QUARTER OF A CENTURY AGO, LOOKING 
UPON HIS FAMILY OF FIVE DAUGHTERS, THOUGHT 
OUT, FAR IN ADVANCE OF HIS CONTEMPO- 
RARIES, ALL THE CONCLUSIONS EM- 
BODIED IN THESE ESSAYS, 

THEY ARE AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY 

HIS DAUGHTERS. 



THE 

Future of Educated Women. 



During the year 1878 there appeared in that 
highly esteemed English periodical, The Nineteenth 
Century, two notable articles written by two repre- 
sentative English women, Mrs. Sutherland Orr, and 
Mrs. Milicent Garrett Fawcett, wife of the eminent 
Prof. Fawcett, which were, apparently, a summing 
up of all that is to be said pro and con on that 
subject which, as Mrs. Fawcett says, for want of a 
better name, is called "The Woman Question." 
The article by Mrs. Sutherland Orr entitled "The 
Future of English Women" was republished by 
the Appletons in the final issue of their supple- 
ment to the Popular Science Monthly. Mrs. Faw- 
cett' s article in reply to Mrs. Orr has never, I be- 
lieve, been republished in this country, but both 
articles attracted very wide attention at the time 
and excited much comment both among Eng- 
lish and American readers. Ever since their ap- 
pearance I have expected that some student of 
sociology and observer of the evolution of society 



2 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

would take up and point out more fully the funda- 
mental weakness of the first article on the Future 
of English Women, and also add somewhat to the 
reply of Mrs. Fawcett. No such attempt, in so 
far as I know, has yet been made; and believing 
that in reality the vitalest reason of "the move- 
ment" has not yet been fully set forth nor its most 
important consequences foreseen or predicted, I 
bring my contribution of observation, experience 
and conviction towards the farther solution of the 
problem. That it is one of the most important 
problems engaging the attention of thoughtful men 
and women cannot be doubted, involving as it does 
the right adjustment of the complex relations of 
women to social and domestic life and the compen- 
satory employments of civilized society. 

The article on the Future of English Women by 
Mrs. Sutherland Orr purports to be a calm, dispas- 
sionate, philosophical consideration of the certain 
results of what she is pleased to call "female eman- 
cipation ;" this being accomplished as she avers by 
the full admission of women to the medical pro 
fession. She says, and truly: 

"When once the medical profession has been 
thrown open to women the question of sexual dis- 
abilities is at an end. The line which may still be 
drawn between the female doctor whose functions 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 3 

are exercised in the sick room and the woman 
whose professional arena would be the ehurch, 
the law-court or the chamber of legislation, holds 
good in theory but will be found to be non-existent 
in practice. The suffrage may be withheld and if 
so there will be no female members in Parliament, 
and, what is more to the immediate point, no direct 
female influence in political life. But whether 
politically represented or not, the destiny of wo- 
men will be the same. They will triumph by rea- 
son of their social independence, which will be an 
indirect political power. Directly or indirectly, 
actually or potentially, for good or for evil, the 
battle for female emancipation will have been won." 
The whole drift of Mrs. Orr's long and carefully 
considered article is to prove that it will be for evil. 
She very candidly admits that up to a certain 
point the movement for the emancipation of women 
has been a beneficent one ; she admits that thus far 
it has borne excellent fruit in the elevation of the 
character and intelligence of women; in enlarging 
the scope of their vision; in increasing their self- 
respect; and as a consequence commanding for them 
the increasing respect of men. Nevertheless she 
deplores that the leaders cannot be induced to call 
a halt; she laments that they do not see that they 
have gone far enough; she wishes they could be in- 
duced to stay the rising tide of progress and say, 
'thus far and no farther;' for in her opinion, car- 



4 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

ried to its logical conclusion, it will result in the 
utter decomposition of society. "Admitting," she 
says, "that women will achieve all that it is prophe- 
sied they will be able to achieve when all the occu- 
pations of life, all avenues to profitable employment, 
all the learned professions are as free to them as to 
men, and are carried on indifferently by men or 
women, the ultimate result will be, they will not be 
superior women, they will only be inferior men;" 
and she adds: "The one fatal result of female 
emancipation is this: that in its full and final 
attainment not only the power of love in women, 
but for either sex its possibility will have passed 
away." 

So extravagant a statement, and one so utterly 
unsupported by proofs might well be passed by 
with a mere smile but for the fact that it finds op- 
portunity for utterance in a publication of such 
high authority as The Nineteenth Century, and 
also calls forth a careful reply from Mrs. Fawcett, 
a lady equally eminent with her husband as a stu- 
dent of socidl and political economy. Mrs. Fawcett 
very properly refutes this statement by a cita- 
tion of facts. Resorting, as all students of so- 
cial science should, to the scientific method of 
proof or disproof, she cites the case of the large 
class of women in England from which female 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 5 

servants are drawn. She says that practically these 
women are in this condition of emancipation so 
dreaded by Mrs. Orr. They work independently 
for a livelihood from their early youth; they are at 
an early age their own mistresses; they earn and 
control their own money; there is no pressure of 
any kind, either social or otherwise, put upon them 
to marry; they do, in many cases, hard muscular 
work, and yet they love and are loved, desire mates 
and are sought in marriage, marry and bear chil- 
dren just as do the women of even the most favored 
and protected classes, and she does not perceive 
that their natural instincts and affections are a whit 
less susceptible, or that they are any less faithful 
and tender in all the domestic relations of life on 
account of their independent and self-supporting 
lives. 

But though this illustration may satisfactorily dis- 
prove this sweeping statement of Mrs. Orr's, we 
are yet obliged to admit that many of the most 
candid and just thinkers upon this subject, both 
men and women, among those who have the 
very best interests of humanity deeply at heart, 
feel many misgivings as to the ultimate result of 
the general entrance of women into all depart- 
ments of the activities of life. Many yield the as- 
sent of reason but withhold the assent of feeling. 



6 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

Their heads are convinced but their hearts shrink 
from accepting the life of a worker as the best life 
for woman. They perceive the necessities that 
compel women to go out into the world to do battle 
for themselves and earn their living; they depre- 
cate the injustice that would add a single feather 
to the weight which they may carry or the disad- 
vantages they may labor under on account of their 
sex; with the true chivalry of the nineteenth cen- 
tury they say, "Make the crooked places straight 
and the rough places plain for these tender feet 
which must perforce walk alone over the difficult 
paths of life;" but they inwardly feel, "Oh, that 
such necessity might not be laid upon them." They 
regard the necessity simply as the result of an 
abnormal condition of society, and the money- 
making efforts of women only as an acceptance of 
the lesser evil. In their hearts they would prob- 
ably coincide with Mrs. Orr in her statement that 
"We can think awa^ the woman question simply 
by imagining the proportion of our marrying men 
to be as great as it once was." That is, if there 
were but a good husband for every woman there 
would be no such thing as "The Woman Move- 
ment." 

And the advocates of the emancipation of wo- 
men and of such a training and education for them 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 7 

as shall fit them for all the activities of life, for 
self-support and for independence of men, in so far 
as supporting themselves is concerned, and of giving 
into their hands that power which helps to mould 
and compel society through possession of a voice in 
making its laws, occupy an inherently weak posi- 
tion if they argue for all these things only on the 
ground that they are necessary in order to protect 
women from the emergencies, the catastrophies, 
the abnormal conditions of life. Their opponents 
might very justly reply, "It is our duty, not to adapt 
and prepare women for abnormal conditions, but 
rather to work for such a re-organization of society 
as shall cause the abnormal conditions to disappear. 
The normal condition of woman is that of wife and 
mother; and the urging of women to independent 
careers and their education for and entrance upon 
money-making professions tends directly to the ex- 
tension and perpetuation of an abnormal condition 
of society, and is therefore in direct opposition to 
the laws of nature, and to the highest and best so- 
cial life." 

But let us go a little farther back and see if it is 
not really a natural law, and not an external neces- 
sity that is at the bottom of this movement; and if 
so let us not conclude that nature is no longer to be 
trusted. Let us see if there are not immutable 



8 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

laws at work in the evolution of organized society, 
just as we have learned there are in the evolution 
of organized life, which shall enable us rightly to 
interpret this "woman movement" and solve our per- 
plexities as to its ultimate beneficent results. The 
environment of woman has changed entirely with 
the progress of civilization. The law of organic life is 
that the individual and the species constantly adapt 
themselves to their environment. May it not be that 
this law of adaptation is so mightily at work in a plas- 
tic social condition that the changes effected by it 
are constantly apparent to the most casual observer ? 
If there is a natural law of adaptation at work at- 
tempting to harmonize woman's nature with pro- 
gressing and chariging intellectual and social con- 
ditions let us learn if possible what it is. Let us 
see if a study of the nature of woman and of the 
conditions necessary to her well-being and happi- 
ness as an intellectually and morally developed 
being will not furnish us with a clue to the harmon- 
izing of the apparently conflicting demands of life 
upon her. 

First then we note that modern civilization has 
educated woman. All her natural and mental fac- 
ulties have been permitted to expand, and have been 
cultivated and stimulated to active growth. Now, 
the first and the necessary immediate effect of the 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 9 

development of the natural faculties is a desire to 
use them. This is an immutable law of all life. 
Teach a child to read and a thirst for reading is de- 
veloped ; teach it to draw and it will seek gratifica- 
tion in representing objects on paper or canvas; 
teach it music and it will wish to sing or play upon 
an instrument; develop a love of knowledge and you 
have set in play forces and desires which nothing 
but death can still. Cultivate any or all of the nat- 
ural faculties and at the same time is developed a 
wish for power and opportunity to use or express 
those faculties. It was the remark of a noble wo- 
man who had observed much of life and pondered 
long on the defective conditions and suppressive lim- 
itations of womanhood, and who was a most earnest 
student of the causes of the agitated and unrestful 
spirit of the social and domestic life of to-day, that 
"what wonian needs is opportunity for expression" 
No sage could more perfectly formulate the natural 
and rational demands of her being; nor can speech, 
it may be added, embody more correctly and epi- 
grammatically the true spirit of the woman move- 
ment. 

What woman needs is opportunity for expression. 
This we recognize both as a great philosophical and 
great practical truth. It is the truth concerning 
the nature not only of women, but of every intel- 



10 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

ligent, aspiring human being, man or woman. It 
contains a statement of the true conditions for 
the healthful development of human character for 
usefulness and happiness. It is indeed the essen- 
tial problem of life and happiness formulated for 
direct and certain solution. 

In the expression or exercise of our natural fac- 
ulties we find content and happiness; in their 
repression we realize pain and deformity. The spir- 
itual nature is informed with a growing, living force 
just as the physical nature is, and must have room 
for growth and exercise under penalties correspond- 
ing to those which result when the body is fettered 
in growth and restrained in action. Our natural 
faculties seek to express themselves objectively 
in creative work. Has any one an artistic faculty ? 
Delight and repose of spirit are found in the exer- 
cise of that faculty in the expression of itself in mu- 
sic, in painting, in sculpture, in literature. Has any 
one a faculty for understanding the natural sciences ? 
Kepose and delight of spirit are found in the study 
and application of the principles of science. Has 
any one a faculty for organizing, for planning, for di- 
recting others, for acquiring property ? Eepose and 
content and delight of spirit are found in the exer- 
cise of such faculties. From their repression the re- 
sult will be pain and unrest and deformity of spirit. 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 11 

From our observation and study of these facts of 
our spiritual and intellectual natures we easily ar- 
rive at this generalization: As intelligent human 
beings we are happy in the exercise of our natural 
faculties through that mode of expression which is 
correlated by a result outside of ourselves; which 
results in something; which externalizes and em- 
bodies inward consciousness and spiritual activity; 
which results in achievement, in equilibration, in 
reaction, in embodied life. Matthew Arnold says 
in his preface to Essays In Criticism, that "it is 
undeniable that the exercise of a creative power, 
that a free creative activity is the true function 
of man; it is proved to be so by man's finding in it 
his true happiness." In this saying he has formu- 
lated the true theory of life for all intelligent hu- 
man beings. We are happy when we are working 
at that which produces something ; which rewards us 
with tangible results. One of the first things we 
observe in the natural development of the faculties 
of children is that they are happy when they are 
working towards the accomplishment of a particu- 
lar object. Whether it is in the making of a wagon 
with spools, or a doll, or a sled, or even demolish- 
ing some toy to see how it is made, we find that 
we have secured a child's content and happiness so 
long as a definite object inspires its labors. This is 



12 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

a law of intellectual life and growth, and it is inhe- 
rent in both boys and girls, in both men and wo- 
men. We are impelled to the exercise of our fac- 
ulties, and we want to exercise them in such a way 
as shall embody our ideas, shall accomplish a spe- 
cific result. When our labor accomplishes this spe- 
cific result there is a sense of reward that is a re- 
storer from fatigue, a real spiritual and mental as 
well as physical nutriment and tonic. 

And it is in the endeavor to conform to this 
law of nature in the midst of changing social 
conditions, that we find the real, vital principle of 
the "woman movement." The education of the fac- 
ulties of woman prompts with all the force of the 
immutability of natural law to new forms of ex- 
pression. There is that within woman by virtue of 
the fact that she is a human being that constantly 
impels her to action — to work. The nature and di- 
rection of the activities in which she should engage 
are clearly defined by nature. The parent who 
has seen two beautiful infants of originally the same 
size and bodily contour develop healthily under 
the same regime, the one into a great muscular, 
strong-limbed, sturdy, rough -skinned boy, the other 
into a graceful, slender girl with round, small-boned 
limbs, small hands and feet, and a skin of flower- 
like delicacy and bloom, quickly and rightly con- 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 13 

eludes that activities requiring great muscular 
strength, and exposure to wind and weather are not 
for the girl, and are for the boy.* But the wisely 
observant parent will not conclude that the activi- 
ties of the girl child are to be restrained in any di- 
rections not indicated by nature. The girl will run 
and play and use her fingers and sing and draw, and 
her mental faculties will develop exactly as the boy's 
faculties develop. There will be no danger of two 
and two making five in the girl's arithmetic; her 
constructive faculties will be the same, just as her 
digestion is the same as her brother's, and the wise 
parent will not attempt to create any artificial dis- 
tinctions. As they grow up together the same law 
will be observed to control both, namely, they will 
be happy and contented in proportion as they find 
satisfactory expression for their faculties. 

Living in the present advanced age of the world 
they will probably be educated in the same uni- 
versities — certainly in the same studies. They 
will assimilate the same truths. In the article by 
Mrs. Sutherland Orr she says that "one of the de- 
plorable tendencies of the times is that towards 
educating boys and girls in the same schools to 



* There are few parents in these days who will argue that the boy's 
superior physical strength gives him any inherent right to control or 
compel his sister, or that on account of the differences in their phys- 
ical development her interests should be subserved to his. 



14 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

think and feel alike." I should like to ask her what 
method she would suggest by which to teach them 
to think and feel differently. The object of thought 
is the perception of truth; the moral nature is cul- 
tivated that feeling may be just, humane, truth- 
ful. Perhaps we might teach girls to think dif- 
ferently from boys by having a different set of 
text books for them. We might teach the girls 
that the earth was square, and teach the boys 
that it was round. We might teach, say, the 
greenback theory to girls, and the hard money 
theory to boys; we might have the girls taught 
protectionist theories, and the boys free trade; we 
might teach the girls pity for all suffering crea- 
tures, and the boys vivisection; we might teach 
girls that truth and honesty are the principal 
things, and teach the boys that business is business, 
and that it is impossible to tell the tiuth in tran- 
sacting it. In no other way that I can imagine can 
boys and girls be taught to think and feel differently 
on subjects where truth and morality — the principal 
things in life — are concerned. But to return. Their 
curriculum of school studies having been completed 
they stand side by side on commencement day with 
their diplomas in their hands, and it is a very differ- 
ent question that is presented to the girl from that 
presented to the boy when it is asked "What next ?" 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 15 

The question is easily answered for the boy. In 
obedience to the law of his being he enters at once 
upon a life of happy rewarding activity. His edu- 
cation has but furnished him with the tools where- 
with to carve the fortune of life. From henceforth 
he is to know the delight of using those cultivated 
faculties in achieving. He may do whatever he 
finds delight in, and if he does it well, aside from 
the pecuniary reward he secures he will also have 
the approbation of the world. But the girl — her 
faculties, too, are all alive and eager for expres- 
sion — action. Shall her parents say to her: My 
daughter your normal condition and destiny is that 
of wife and mother. Come now and occupy your- 
self contentedly with domestic tasks until the 
happy youth appears who shall complete your 
destiny. 

Can two laws of nature conflict ? By the law of 
the necessity for the expression of her faculties the 
girl will find that the penalty of their neglect or 
disuse is pain and discontent. She will also find 
that to employ them without any special object in 
view is impossible. All the so-called feminine work 
of modern society (considered feminine because it 
commands no pay — results in nothing permanent or 
valuable) is vanity and vexation of spirit to the active 
minded, rightly educated girl. She imagines how her 



16 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

educated brother would feel fooling away his time in 
the occupations allotted by society to her. Is it 
replied that this is because she is unwomanized by 
her education ? Will the objector take the other 
horn of the dilemma and assert that she ought not 
to be educated ? If so the logic must be pressed 
to its ultimatum. Either forbid women to learn 
the alphabet or concede all that a knowledge of the 
alphabet implies. Either repress and root out 
every tendency to mental growth and activity or 
prepare to accept the results when the mental 
faculties of women grow out into the full sunshine 
of eternal truth. 

But let us go back to nature again; let us see if she 
does not suggest a solution to this problem. There 
was a period in our social development when this 
problem of finding rewarding activities for girls in 
the home did not give trouble. It was in the days 
of domestic manufactures. When women spun and 
wove and made linen and starch and soap and 
candles and cheese and the clothes both for them- 
selves and the men of the family they really had 
stimulating, happifying and rewarding occupation. 
Why? Because the results of their labors were 
tangible. They were the outward and visible re- 
sults of an inward living activity. It is often com- 
plained that our industrious grandmothers were far 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN, 17 

happier and more contented than their luxurious 
and cultivated granddaughters. So they were. 
Well they might be. They found ready to their 
hands rewarding, productive industries. In their 
great rolls of cloth which their hands had spun and 
woven, in their stacks of home-made blankets and 
quilts, in the innumerable articles of use of domes- 
tic manufacture in their homes they had something 
to show, and the inspiring correlative of their work 
was tangible wealth. 

Through no fault of women, but in consequence 
of the working of the great central law of modern 
civilization, the organization and division of labor, 
and in consequence of the introduction and perfec- 
tion of machinery, all domestic manufactures that 
are productive have been removed from the home 
to the manufactory. The occupations of the home 
now, with the exception of the care of children, 
consist mainly in repairing the ravages of daily 
life. Woman no longer finds in the home the cor- 
relative of her powers and faculties in rewarding, 
stimulating, wealth-producing work. Can she 
adjust the balances of her life, can she find the 
proper equilibration of her powers without it? Or 
shall she go outside of the home to seek it ? We 
shall soon find that we are going in direct opposi- 
tion to nature's laws if we accept inaction, stag- 



18 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

nation or even mere occupation as the necessary 
alternative. By the unhappiness and ennui she in- 
flicts, nature will do all she can to compel us to find 
another way. it will be a new phase of the old 
struggle of the organism with the environment. 

What then is the impelling power that causes an 
educated womanhood everywhere to seek for more 
opportunities for the expression of educated facul- 
ties and for a greater share in the true work of the 
world? Why are women organiziDg in every little 
town and hamlet their clubs for social, literary and 
benevolent purposes? Why are they interesting 
themselves in school systems and benevolent institu- 
tions and asking that their work and influence may 
be utilized in the boards that control these institu- 
tions? Why are they seeking to obtain an inde- 
pendent share in the pecuniary interests of the 
world ? Why, indeed, are they declaring that they 
want a voice in the choosing of law- makers, and also 
that women should have a share in administering the 
government ? Why do they ask that every profes- 
sion and every avocation of life be freely opened 
to them? It is because they feel the impulsion 
of that immutable law of growth which demands 
scope for development. The walls of the individual 
home can no more afford sufficient scope for action 
for the expanding and growing powers of women 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 19 

than the bulb can contain the hyacinth when it feels 
the impulse of the spring. It is not simply in 
order that they may be able to defend themselves 
against the necessities and the emergencies of life, 
that this wider scope for action is required; for it 
would not mend the matter or solve the problem 
were every educated woman fully defended pecuni- 
arily from all the adversities of life. Woman's ex- 
panding powers would still demand for their satisfac- 
tion, work — rewarding ivork. This is still the in- 
satiable demand of the immortal spirit as it ex- 
pands and unfolds through intellectual develop- 
ment. Rewarding activity is the only content; it 
is the only condition in which is possible true re- 
pose of spirit. 

Recognizing, then, the necessity that exists from 
the very nature of things that educated young wo- 
men shall find worthy occupation for their time and 
talents, — not merely because a necessity exists or 
may some time be laid upon them to earn their own 
living; not merely because they are disposed to be 
"strong-minded," and to "think and feel like men" 
in the sense that Mrs. Orr means, but because 
their right relation to life demands scope for 
their intellectual energies and mental and bod- 
ily activities, and because their happiness re- 
quires work that commands some commensurate 



20 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

reward — the most important problem that presents 
itself to parents of the educated young women 
of to-day is that of suitable and satisfying and 
rewarding occupations for them. Society has al- 
ready advanced far enough on this subject to 
recognize the fact that the parents of any young 
woman who during her school years develops a 
special talent for some of the higher forms of 
work, as literature, music, painting, or who feels 
drawn towards teaching in its higher departments 
as a congenial work, are fortunate. In our country 
at least it is most honorable for educated young 
women, the daughters of parents in comfortable 
or even wealthy circumstances, to devote themselves 
to remunerative work in any of these higher de- 
partments of labor. The problem of life is in the 
main solved for them, as it is for any human being 
when a congenial life-work is found. As Carlyle 
impressively says, "There is a perennial nobleness 
and even sacredness in work .... The whole soul of 
a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the 
instant he sets himself to work .... Destiny has on 
the whole no other way of cultivating us. A form- 
less chaos, once set it revolving, grows round and 
even rounder, ranges itself by mere force of gravity 
into strata, spherical courses; is no longer chaos but 
a round compacted world." And again he says, 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 21 

"Blessed is he who has found his work, let him ask 
no other blessedness .... Labour is life : from the 
inmost heart of the Worker rises his God-given 
Force, the sacred celestial Life-essence breathed 
into him by Almighty God; from his inmost heart 
awakens him to all nobleness, — to all knowledge, 
'self-knowledge' and much else, so soon as work 
fitly begins." But even Carlyle failed to recog- 
nize the fact that this grand fundamental truth 
which he announced applied to women as well as 
men. * This is the truth that society is just wak- 
ing up to perceive; this is the natural law whose 
manifestations are so perplexing and bewildering 
to thousands of good people of the present age and 
generation. To this law all normal, social and do- 
mestic life must and will yet adjust itself. 

But outside of these higher occupations; outside 
of cases of exceptional talent and adaptability to 
special high pursuits, where are we to find scope for 
the activities of educated young women in the or- 
dinary walks of life? 

* Since this paper was written the publication of Carlyle's Reminis- 
cences and of the Life and Letters of Mrs Carlyle have given the 
world an insight in to the heartworkings of that home which ought to 
have been one of the happiest, but was not. But how suggestive of 
one of the main causes of that unhappiness is this extract from one of 
Mrs. Carlyle's letters: "To be sure, it is hard on flesh and blood 
when one has nothing to keep one at home, to sit down in honest life- 
weariness and look oat into unmitigated zero; but, perhaps, it would 
oe a great advantage just to go ahead in that; the bare-faced indigence 
of such a state might drive one, like the piper's cow, to 'consider,' 
and who knows but in considering long enough one might discover 
what one has wanted— an essential preliminary to getting it." 



22 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

It would be well to digress a moment here to 
mark the strong emphasis which belongs to this 
question. Especially do I wish that I could 
gain the ear of fathers upon this point. Men are 
so apt, in the pressure of business and their own 
affairs, to forget women. They say, in a kind of 
general way, "Oh, we don't want women to work; 
it is our duty and pleasure to support them, and to 
guard them against the necessity of engaging in 
anything but domestic occupations. Do let them 
be quiet and contented, and for heaven's sake let 
them be domestic. We will give them everything 
they want if they will only not be progressive and 
strong-minded." And then they go off to their 
daily occupations and engage in them with the zest 
that comes from remunerative work, and their ed- 
ucated daughters seek in vain for some mode of 
satisfactory expression for their cultivated faculties 
in the home. There is no longer any rewarding 
occupation there. There is no work to be accom- 
plished, nothing to show as the worthy correlative of 
educated powers and cultivated, active minds. Do 
men have any idea of the dreadful ennui that con- 
sumes thousands of well-educated, bright, aspiring 
girls in thousands of comfortable homes ? "What 
shall I do, papa ?" was the weary question of one 
of these. "Do, my dear! do — do? Well, suppose 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 23 

you do me a worsted dog on a pair of slippers." It 
is this lack of satisfying and productive occupation in 
the home, brought about by the inevitable progress 
of industrial organization, that has given rise to 
what a satirical writer has called the decorative art 
craze. If women could not do anything else that 
was satisfactory, they could at least decorate their 
homes. This is all very well as far as it goes, and 
if not carried too far; but many a house, with its 
wilderness of useless bric-a-brac, tidies, ornamented 
paper-holders and shoe- bags, embroidered rugs and 
stools, which men stumble over and then mutter 
words not meant for polite ears, is a pathetic ap- 
peal for something to do for the daughters of the 
household. "Something to do, something to do," 
is still the insatiable cry of the active, growing child, 
who, in uttering it, express es one of the immutable 
laws of being. It is still the insatiable demand of 
the immortal spirit as it expands and unfolds 
through intellectual development. 

Difficult as is at present the problem of suitable 
and remunerative employment for educated women, 
it is one that is constantly growing easier of solu- 
tion because of the rapid changes which are taking 
place in the modes of domestic and social life owing 
to the wonderful effects wrought by the industrial 
organization of society. Hitherto it has been the 



24 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

fashion to insist upon, as of paramount importance, 
the domestic training of girls, but this has in a 
large measure lost its meaning since the organiza- 
tion of labor and the introduction of machinery 
has so nearly removed from the home all the arts 
of domestic production. And he is a superficial 
observer of the signs of the times who does not 
perceive that it will not be long until all the re- 
maining domestic arts will follow those already de- 
parted out of the home. Even cooking will ere long 
become in cities and villages an outside organized in- 
dustry just as laundry work and clothes-making have 
become. Institutions specially planned for the pur- 
pose will in the near future send us our appetizing 
ready- cooked meals promptly into our houses, and the 
perplexing servant question in the home will in the 
main be solved by the removal of all the unpleasant 
drudgery by outside industrial organization. We 
will then need in our homes only helpers in the 
care and training of our children, and these may 
be educated, refined, companionable young women. 
In the almost entire removal of this general 
mass and muss of disorganized housework from our 
homes, one of the greatest difficulties in the way of 
specializing and thus rendering effective and remun- 
erative the work of educated women will be re- 
moved. Every daughter in the home can feel free 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 25 

to select and follow some special occupation — in 
fact will feel that this is the proper thing to do 
just as do her brothers. What such occupations 
shall be, time will more fully develop. A great 
many pleasant and remunerative occupations are 
now open to women, and more will constantly open 
as girls more generally undertake to follow them 
and as the conditioDs of home and social life favor 
their entrance into them. 

And in the outside organized work of the world 
all the lighter and more delicate departments of 
manufacturing will in time be given over to women; 
clerical work, the great departments of distributive 
production, including the selling of goods, book- 
keeping, etc., will more and more give employment 
to educated young women."* Here let me digress to 
say a word as to what I consider the true chivalry 
of the nineteenth century. We sometimes hear 

* To those parents who shrink, as doubtless many do, at the thought 
of their daughters going out from the refined and protecting surround- 
ings of the home to engage in wage-earning occupations there is en- 
couragement in observing how the surroundings of labor, especially 
in the great departments of manufacturing and distributing produc- 
tion, are being improved and made even beautiful and elegant by our 
great commercial princes. In Boston, in New York, in Chicago, there 
are establishments where hundreds of girls and women are employed 
under such conditions and with such surroundings of convenience and 
elegance as ensure health and comfort. The increase of the number 
of great buildings specially planned for the admission of air and light, 
with elevators and fire-escapes, with appointments for the comfort of 
those employed in them as elegant as in first-class hotels, is one of the 
best signs of the approaching paradise of labor where our daughters 
shall follow special occupations under desirable conditions and with 
refined surroundings. Alas that for so many of the uneducated, un- 
cared for classes of women-workers the exact reverse now obtains! 



26 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

people sigh for the chivalric age when beautiful 
maidens lived in castles and their brave knights 
thought it their highest pleasure and honor to de- 
fend them from robbers and wild beasts and the 
shocks of war. That age has passed away; there 
are no longer great forests in which bandits and 
robbers and wild beasts prowl and hide. Woman's 
life and honor and happiness are no longer endang- 
ered by these; but they are endangered by subtlei' 
foes from which only her own hand can defend her. 
Lack of employment, lack of power, lack of oppor- 
tunity, lack of education, a feeble physical devel- 
opment — these are the foes of womanhood in this 
age of the world/ He is the true knight errant who,' 
says to woman: "Here is an easy place where you 
can earn independence and comfort; take it and I 
will get out and hunt me a harder place which you 
cannot fill." He is the truly chivalric man who 
says: "Here! there are thousands of refined and 
educated women who want remunerative work — 
who are endangered by lack of it. Clear out these 
offices; remove those spittoons; carpet these floors; 
stop swearing and talking roughly; bring in these 
fair women and give them a chance — an equal 
chance with ourselves at the work of the world." 
And as for the man who in addition to all this says: 
"and we will give them equal pay for equal work," 



THE FUTURE OP EDUCATED WOMEN. 27 

he is the noblest knight errant of them all, for he 
thus expresses and illustrates the noblest human 
virtue, Justice. 

We will hope and expect however that our edu- 
cated daughters, many of them, will open up new 
avenues for themselves and achieve great things. 
Here allow me to remark that I have as I believe 
arrived at a correct definition of a feminine occu- 
pation — or at least of what has hitherto been re- 
garded by the world as a proper feminine occupa- 
tion. It has been said that women cannot general- 
ize — or rather that they generalize from one fact. 
As the result of one of my first attempts at gener- 
alization I would define a feminine occupation to 
be one that is not organized and that has no money 
in it. Take for instance washing and ironing! 
Although the very hardest kind of work with the 
very poorest kind of pay, so long as it is done by 
women singly and alone it is a strictly feminine occu- 
pation. Get up a steam laundry, organize the work 
and do it so as to make money by it and it becomes 
an honorable masculine occupation, and, as I have 
before remarked, in large cities laundry work is 
passing largely into the hands of men, where, 
doubtless, it properly belongs. Spinning and weav- 
ing were feminine occupations until the power loom 
was invented and cloth woven by the million yards, 



28 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

when it at once became an honorable and desirable 
masculice occupation, and not a woman ever 
thought to quote the bible to prove that women 
alone should use the distaff and spindle. So of 
soap- making, starch -making, cheese-making, can- 
dle-making, clothes-making — any occupation that 
women ever did engage in — just as soon as it can 
be so organized as to make money and evolve 
power it ceases to be a feminine occupation. I am 
sure a close scrutiny into this subject will prove 
that hitherto whatsoever things were weak, whatso- 
ever things were small, whatsoever places or occu- 
pations were without, power, or influence, or pay, 
or were disagreeable, have been considered truly 
feminine. 

A woman who has achieved great things for her- 
self has said that she receives a thousand letters 
every year from girls and women asking her what 
they shall do. She says she has but one reply 
for each and all, and that is "Thou alone canst an- 
swer." While we should endeavor to prepare the 
way by all means in our power for the recognition 
of our daughters as rightful co- laborers with our 
sons, and justly entitled to equal opportunities 
to earn and control their wages, yet let us remem- 
ber that if our daughters would achieve great 
things, they must pay the price in struggle and 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 29 

anxiety. Eschylus says that glories are the chil- 
dren of hardship and God's favor. Our daughters 
must know that no one achieves great things with- 
out earnest, long sustained effort; that discourage- 
ments must be bravely encountered, defeats and 
disappointments accepted without allowing these to 
cause them to swerve from their course if they 
would accomplish great things. 

When young women are thus prepared by a lib- 
eral education for lives of usefulness and self-sup- 
port we shall expect the question of their marriage 
to be one which they shall be as free to decide 
as are our young men. If for any reason they 
choose to remain single the title "old maid" will not 
have any stigma for them. It is inevitable that the 
removal of any external pressure of necessity to mar- 
ry for the sake of a home and a support will have a 
tendency to elevate the standard of marriage, first 
among women and then among men. One of the 
greatest foes to happy marriages is the existence of 
the mercenary spirit on the part of parents and 
daughters. Nothing will so effectively remove it as 
the possession by young gir!s and women of satis- 
factory, honorable, remunerative occupations, and 
the countenance and approbation of society in their 
pursuit of them. We have now before us so many 
beautiful examples of single women who live happy, 



30 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

useful and independent lives in charming homes of 
their own, and who occupy the highest social posi- 
tion, that our educated daughters need not fear if 
for any reason they choose in this respect to imi- 
tate their example. Alice and Phoebe Cary, in their 
beautiful home, once the center of one of the most 
charming and cultivated social circles in the world, 
Harriet Martineau, Jean Ingelow and others occur 
to our minds as representatives of happy, honored 
maiden life. Time would fail me to tell of Mary 
Carpenter, Elizabeth Peabody, Florence Nightin- 
gale, Caroline Herschel, Emily Faithful, Octavia 
Hill, Maria Mitchell. These have all lived in faith, 
and were persuaded that there is a high and holy call- 
ing for women, even though they do not marry, — 
are never wife and mother; and through faith and pa- 
tience they have inherited the promise of old, that 
to those who love truth and righteousness and fol- 
low on to know the Lord there shall be given a 
name and place better than of sons and daughters. 
It is a very encouraging sign of the times that 
many parents who occupy high social position 
and have abundance of means to maintain their 
daughters in luxury and idleness, were they so dis- 
posed, are seriously considering the question of oc- 
cupation for their daughters, and even taking practi- 
cal steps towards securing it. I heard a wealthy bank- 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 31 

er say, a short time since, that it was his intention as 
soon as his daughter graduated, to take her into the 
bank and have her thoroughly and practically in- 
structed in bank business. I heard an eminent judge 
declare a very few weeks ago that his two daughters 
were to come into his law office on the completion 
of their school education, and learn to do office 
work. They were to be his clerks and amanuenses. 
I was further delighted to learn that in both cases 
these fathers expected to recognize the value of their 
daughters' services by paying them in money. 

The prejudice against the earning of money by 
women, even among those fortunately situated in life, 
has measurably passed away, even as has passed 
away, or is passing away in the old world the prej- 
udice against members of the nobility entering 
upon commercial avocations, and as is passing away 
the sentiment that condemned the artist or poet 
who asked pecuniary reward for the creations of his 
genius. Byron indignantly sent back a check to 
his publishers when at the same time there was an 
execution in his house for debt, but the poet Tenny- 
son does not hesitate to make a good strong bar- 
gain for so many pounds a line for his poetry when 
negotiating with his publishers. And so we hope 
the day is about past when women who do anything 
to earn money must feel called upon to apologize 



32 THE FUTUKE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

for it; when the comfortably situated housekeep- 
er who has a few boarders must feel it incum- 
bent on her to explain that she only takes them 
for company; or when the woman who teaches 
music must assert that she only does it for the sake 
of keeping up her own knowledge of the science. 
And above all we hope the day is near at hand 
when it will not be considered a reflection on fath- 
er, brother or husband, that daughter, sister or 
wife does something that is rewarded in money- 
For money is the most wonderful and delicate in- 
strument of power that civilization has ever pro- 
duced. It is the agent by which we adjust our- 
selves to life; it is the universal solvent by which 
we transmute our labor from any one form into any 
other form. It is the great emancipator. "When 
labor ceased to work under the compulsion of the 
lash and began to work for the incentive of pay, 
the slave became the man. In this liberty to handle 
as he pleased the money he earned, the most in- 
spiring of human motives was presented to him. 
All toil, even the most monotonous and disagreeable, 
is ennobled and dignified by the money which is its 
reward. The patient bricklayer, from early morn 
till evening, with roughened hands and bended back 
and grimy garments, picks up and lays down and 
mortars his bricks, performing the same motions 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 33 

endlessly over and over again. What prevents 
him or any other routine toiler from becoming a 
mere callous human machine ? It is the thought 
of the money which his work will bring by which 
this hard, monotonous toil is transmuted into food 
and raiment and shelter, into comfort and even 
beauty for his wife and little ones. This it is that 
cultivates the best sentiments of humanity in his 
heart, prevents him from becoming a clod, makes 
a man of him. And since the progress of woman- 
hood is in the direction of the acquisition of knowl- 
edge, which is power ; since the one inevitable result 
of woman's education will be desire for the exercise of 
power, the next stage of her progress will be to 
learn the use and value of the power and influence 
which comes through the possession of money — all 
the more enjoyable if this money represents work 
done by herself — power evolved by her own life 
forces. 

Thus far I have considered the future of edu- 
cated women in the aspect of its relation to the indi- 
vidual only. I have endeavored to elucidate the 
true relation to life held by women who instead of 
"filling spheres" are spheres themselves, revolving 
on/ their own axes, performing their own orbits. 
Life's fairest prospect for them, however, must ever 
be that of honored and beloved wifehood and happy 



34 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

motherhood. What about their special occupations 
then ? I hear it asked. I reply unhesitatingly that 
in the case of a great many special occupations they 
will probably have to cease while women are engaged 
in the care of the infancy and youth of their children. 
But that will not harm them. It will only leave 
room in the world of work for those who are com- 
ing on ready to fill their places. They will also 
be possessed of the happy consciousness that if 
necessity requires they can return to their spec- 
ial occupations. They will not be oppiessed by 
the fear that hangs like the sword of Damocles 
over the heads of thousands of wives and mothers, 
viz : that they may be deprived by death not only of 
husband, but of home and support, and thrown 
with their little ones helpless and dependent on 
the cold charities of the world. 

Several important advantages will result to edu- 
cated women in married life from their practised 
ability to earn money and fill important and reward- 
ing positions in the world of work. In the first place 
husbands and society in general will come to have 
a more just appreciation of the value— pecuniary 
value if you like — of a wife's work in the care of 
her home and rearing of her family. The fact will be 
better appreciated that when an intelligent, capable 
labor-competent woman resigns all opportunities for 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 35 

earning money, and thus independence and comfort 
for herself, to devote all her powers and risk health 
and even life itself for the sake of husband and 
children, some commensurate recognition of this 
sacrifice should be made in the partnership of the 
home. The old fashioned idea that a wife is a de- 
pendent, is supported, will give away to the more 
just proposition that a wife should be regarded as 
partner entitled to the recognition of her services 
by sharing with her husband the control of his in- 
come. Here I know I touch upon a delicate and 
difficult subject, but I do not hesitate to take the re- 
sponsibility of declaring that this matter of the 
purse has been in times past, is now, in thousands 
of otherwise happy homes, the source of more un- 
happiness than good men have ever dreamed of. I 
cannot explain my meaning in any way so well as 
by drawing for you from life two pictures of two 
educated women, asking which you shall choose as 
the fairer. 

Both women are young, beautiful, educated 
talented, brilliant — the pride of their hus- 
bands. Both are mistresses of large establishments 
and keep numerous servants, a carriage, etc. Both 
are the mothers of three little children. One hus- 
band tells his wife to get everything she wants for 
the house and herself and the children and have 



36 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

the bills sent to hira monthly, and he never com- 
plains no matter how large they are. He keeps his 
wife supplied with a fairly generous amount of gen- 
eral expense money, as he calls it, and occasionally 
gives her besides twenty dollars, fifty dollars or even 
in a special fit of generosity one hundred dollars. 
But everything which she gets in money comes as a 
gift from him ; it is by no means accorded to her as 
a recognition of the faithful work she performs 
in the conducting of their home, or of the fact that 
she has all the care of their children. Now 
this beautiful woman whose every want, is 
supplied, feels that she works just as hard, 
expends just as much strength and vitality, 
exercises her brain forces just as much in the care 
of their home and children as her husband does in 
his office. In fact in this case she expends much 
more vitality, for his business is organized and 
runs smoothly, while hers is disorganized and runs 
joltingly. Before her marriage as a very superior 
musician she earned and controlled a sa^ry of two 
thousand dollars a year. She has friends near and 
dear who are poor. She has a widowed mother living 
in comparative poverty; she has a young brother 
struggling through college; she has a young sis- 
ter with wonderful artistic tastes who needs assist- 
ance in developing them in the shape of opportuni- 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 37 

ty to study under good masters ; yet this sister who 
is the wife of a rich man can do nothing for them 
except she places both herself and her friends in 
the light of beneficiaries of her husband. So very 
often she sits in her sumptuous parlors, twisting 
the diamond rings on her fingers, arid groans in 
spirit to think that out of her husband's thousands 
she cannot control or call her own five hundred 
dollars. To be sure if she should ask him for 
money for herself or to assist her mother or brother 
he would probably give it — give it\ He would be 
the benefactor and they the beneficiaries. Often is 
the determination more than half taken to again 
secure music pupils and have the proceeds of her 
labor for her very own to handle and do with as 
she pleases. 

The other husband out of a generous income 
places a certain amount to his wife's credit in bank 
every month. When she has accumulated a con- 
siderable amount — as she often does — he advises 
her how to invest it in this direction and that. She 
buys bank and railroad stock; she owns two or 
three houses and collects the rent. She knows all 
about notes and drafts and checks and mortgages, 
and can calculate interest or discount. She can 
subscribe five hundred dollars to a church or an 
orphan aslyum; she can lend a struggling young 



38 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

girl or a widowed friend a few hundred dollars. 
She has none of that wretched feeling of being re- 
garded as a dependent which is such a blight to the 
lives of thousands of married women. She feels 
that her labors in the sacred partnership of the 
home are recognized in a tangible way, hence has 
none of that feeling that so many housekeepers 
have that they spend their strength in vain and 
that their labor is for naught. And no one enjoys 
this state of things more than her husband. He 
often says that it is a source of constant satisfaction 
to him that his wife has such a knowledge of busi- 
ness that if he were called suddenly away he would 
not fear but that she could manage all their proper- 
ty interests. No trustees are needed to manage 
her property (away from her) and the knowledge of 
this fact is health to the heart of both husband 
and wife. 

My second picture illustrates the probable effect of 
education on the married lives of our daughters when 
as wives and mothers they give up their whole time 
to the care of their homes and children. As the 
majority of homes are now organized this almost 
entire devotion of the wife's energies to the conduct 
of the home seems necessary. It is in every case a 
question of individual circumstances and disposi- 
tion whether the wife shall have any other occupa- 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 39 

tion. Certain it is, also, that it must be laid down as 
an axiom around winch all true social life shall re- 
volve that a mother's first duty is to her children. 
That is, and will always be, an abnormal condition of 
society which brings a pressure to bear upon moth- 
ers to force them into money- making occupations 
when their time is needed by their families and 
homes. Nevertheless it is my opinion that as a 
result of the organization of domestic labor by 
which the most of the work of the home except 
the care of children, will be taken out of the house 
in cities or villages, the time is near at hand when 
thousands of educated married women will aim to 
have some specialty which they may still pursue 
in their homes both as a satisfaction of their pow- 
ers and as a means of earning money. 

In homes of limited incomes I think the introduc- 
tion of special work for the wives and mothers would 
prove a great blessing. In defence of this opinion 
I offer this simple illustration. We all know that 
the wife of a man in moderate or limited circum- 
stances, if she have a house and family, does a great 
deal of work, and very hard work, too, besides tak- 
ing care of her children. She cooks, she sweeps, 
she bakes, she sews. In fact there is no more 
common fallacy than to suppose that women who 
are so "very domestic" as we phrase it, give unusual 



40 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

care to their children; they do not, — they have not 
the time. Their energies are mainly taxed to get 
the household work out of the way; to have 
breakfast, dinner and supper promptly on the 
table; — and to their children it is — "Oh run away" 
— "do go off" — "do keep from under my feet;" 
and happy are you, my friends, if in homes of re 
spectability you have never seen little children 
die really of neglect while the busy mother's over- 
taxed energies were all absorbed in keeping up 
with the exacting routine of housework. I have 
seen a little sick child, who should have had every 
moment of its mother's attention and all her fresh- 
est and best energies, left lying in its cradle while 
she, poor woman, swept and cooked and worked; 
and I have heard her wild anguish over its little 
body when the frail life departed for want of the 
necessary care to save it. Well, I will suppose the 
case of the mother of a family where the husband's 
income is so limited that the wife feels that she 
must do all her own work including the washing 
and ironing. To get her washing and ironing done 
— taken clear away from the house, — will cost, say, 
two dollars a week. Now suppose this woman was 
an expert, say on a sewing machine or a knitting 
machine, or in some kind of special work that 
would command pay. Suppose that with her 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 41 

house in order, her children playing about her, she 
sits down for two or three hours a day to this spec- 
ial work. If she did no more than pay the 
money she earned for the laundry work she 
hired done, who would say that this was not the 
better way? But it is probable she would earn 
considerably more. 

This is only an illustration of a general principle 
in regard to the work of women in the home which 
must eventually be generally recognized in the 
progress of education and of the organization of 
labor. At the outset,however, one of the difficulties 
to be met and overcome is the feeling on the part 
of many husbands that they do not want their 
wives to work — for money. Now this is a feeling 
that has its root in a right sentiment, and I greatly 
respect it, although I think that with changing so- 
cial conditions we need also to change our opinions 
and to beware of being governed by mere preju- 
dice. It is a right and noble instinct that makes 
every true man feel that he must and ought to be 
the bread-winner for his family. Nevertheless no 
man objects but rather prides himself on the fact 
if he has an industrious, capable wife. If so, the 
question simply becomes a choice of work. A man 
who goes off to his work in the morning to remain 
away till noon, and then till night, has no reason 



42 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

for feeling happier if he knows that his wife in his 
absence is doing some hard household work in 
order to save money, rather than some easy special 
work for which she receives money in return. I 
have heard men boast of their wives' culinary ex- 
ploits; I have seen them point with pride to the 
immense household tasks of which they were capa- 
ble; I have experienced far more satisfaction when 
a gentleman in whose family I visited, showed me 
with pride and pleasure the beautiful panel pic- 
tures his wife painted and for which she received ten 
dollars apiece, the occupation affording her both 
delight and pecuniary reward. I have felt a 
real happy inspiration in looking over a large varie- 
ty of wood carvings done by a delicate wife, whose 
husband also took pride and delight in her work, 
such as I never experienced in contemplating an 
elaborate meal cooked by an intelligent woman; 
and I have said: all of these things are tokens of 
an advancing civilization. 

This principle holds good and becomes more and 
more apparent as we rise from the less educated to 
the more cultivated, capable and refined women of 
our land. When we reach the class who are not 
forced by necessity to endeavor to make their labor 
productive we reach those who are impelled by the 
inward forces, of which I spoke in the early part of 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 43 

my paper, to do something, to accomplish some- 
thing, that shall worthily correspond to their edu- 
cated powers and faculties. Here I trust I shall 
be pardoned for particularizing somewhat. For 
many years, first as teacher in a large seminary and 
afterwards in editorial work, I have been in a 
position to learn much of the aspirations, the 
efforts, the difficulties of educated women. I be- 
lieve if it were generally known how many educated 
women, married and unmarried, are now seeking 
for opportunities to apply their cultivated 
powers to some work that would in return 
bring money, or in some way show a tangible, 
practical result, all would agree with me that 
such a general want indicates that a general 
remedy must be near at hand. On this point I 
speak authoritatively, for T speak what I know from 
personal experience and observation. I am some- 
times surprised to find how strong is the desire to do 
something to earn money or to accomplish some 
pecuniary object even among the wealthy,- -those 
from whom one might suppose the idea would be 
the farthest possible. A short time since a lovely 
gray-haired woman, the mother of a family of sons, 
showed me some poems and essays she had written, 
and when I expressed pleasure at their excellence 
and told her I thought she could get pay for them 



4A THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

from standard magazines, she said: "Do you think 
so ? oh, I think it would be so delightful to earn a 
little money." I may say that she sent the poems 
where I advised and received a check in return 
which seemed to delight her exceedingly. I know 
a very accomplished and elegant lady, the daughter 
of one senator and the wife of another, who has 
written a very successful cook-book. It is said her 
income from the royalty is about two thousand dol- 
lars a year, and many are the expressions that fall from 
the lips of her lady friends of "How fortunate she 
is!" "How she must enjoy having an independent 
income of her own!" "I wish I could write a cook- 
book," etc. Let no one condemn women, and let 
not women condemn themselves, for their earnest 
longings to realize worthy proportional results 
for their labors. Let them not be condemned for 
looking beyond the walls of the home to find op- 
portunity for securing these results. This is not 
mere irrational discontent; rather it is the effort of 
growth. The unrest and disquietude of spirit that 
is so often coincident with such effort are a kind of 
spiritual growing pains which will pass away when 
that which fetters growth is removed. No feeling 
is more normal, more commendable than that 
which impels us to seek to effect results in some 
degree commensurate with our powers, and to feel 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 45 

dissatisfied and unhappy when we fail to do so. 
I well remember the deep impression made upon 
my mind many years ago by listening to the con- 
versation of a highly educated and highly gifted 
woman who had been a successful teacher before 
her marriage, as she half humorously, half patheti- 
cally detailed some of the experiences of her early 
married life. What she said was in effect this: 
"When my husband and myself settled down in 
our cozy little home after marriage the question of 
how I should occupy my time was a grave one. At 
first I undertook to do my own work. I observed 
that to get our little breakfast, wash the dishes and 
put my house in order took about four hours of my 
time. An equal amount of time spent in teaching 
before my marriage earned for me seventy-five dol- 
lars a month. I observed that to secure the result of 
three loaves of good bread my attention 
was kept on the stretch for about twelve 
hours. Accustomed before my marriage to 
methodical work and large results, the con- 
sciousness of spending such an amount of 
time and energy every day simply in getting three 
meals for two people really caused the most distres- 
sing sense of wasted and misdirected effort. I be- 
gan to fear my teaching had rendered me undo- 
mestic in my tastes, and yet I loved my husband 



46 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

and my home. I finally solved the problem, by 
hiring my housework done by a woman with more 
muscle and less brains than myself, who was exces- 
sively glad to get the work and the three dollars a 
week I paid her for it, while I betook myself to 
teaching private classes in literature, occupying my- 
self just as I had done before marriage,earning there- 
by a handsome income. I was far happier in doing 
so and my home suffered no loss in consequence. 
Even after my children came I found that I was 
better in heart and richer in pocket for continuing 
my teaching, which was both a diversion from too 
constant household care and a source of personal 
income which was most enjoyable." 

I have said that such a general social want 
indicates that a general remedy must be at hand. 
In nature and in the divine economy (which 
some call evolution) we see this constant 
provision for the newly developing needs of the hu- 
man race. New articles of food, new methods of 
communication and transportation are constantly 
being discovered as humanity needs them. Years 
ago great alarm was expressed because it was dis- 
covered that the whale fisheries would not much 
longer be able to supply the demand for oil for 
light; yet before the whale fisheries were exhausted 
we had discovered rivers of oil in the depths of the 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 47 

earth. England is occasionally agitated by the dec- 
laration of scientists that it is but a question of 
time till her coal-fields are exhausted; but before 
the coals are exhausted, scientists have told us that 
we shall get both heat and light from 
electricity, and we are probably about to realize 
this prediction. As the populations of the old 
world have become too dense, ocean steamers and 
trans-continental railways have multiplied so as to 
meet the necessities of the people by bringing them 
to the great fertile fields of the new world. So in 
society. Since there is a necessity that women en- 
gage in other work than simply the care of chil- 
dren, and since in the rapid progress of industrial 
organization it is evident that no other work will 
much longer be distinctively the work of the home, 
it is evident that we are tending to such a change 
in social conditions as shall give to women general- 
ly an opportunity to share in the work and wages 
of the world, in their homes if necessary, or by a 
different arrangement of home life permitting them 
to leave their homes for a portion of every day to 
engage in remunerative labor. 

And this change but presages other vital, rapidly 
approaching changes. Educate women and they 
will wish to exercise their cultivated powers in a 
way that will produce a commensurate result. The 



48 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

readiest form which that result will take will more 
and more be money. The control of money gives 
power. Power is sweet to every human heart. 
Once exercised it is never willingly relinquished by 
any human being. Women will learn the value of 
money and of the power which its possession gives 
and will naturally wish to learn to take care of it. 
This will lead them into a new domain of thought 
and experience, for it will make them practical and 
intelligent participants in the social economy. 

Property rights are great educators. Women 
who are as unable to see the connection between 
individual welfare and the law making power — in 
other words the ballot — as the common sailor is to 
understand the. relation between compass and chro- 
nometer and the movements of the stars — women 
who are unaffected by any logic of argument are 
very quickly taught by the logic of experience the 
vital connection there is between self protection 
on the part of property owners and the possession 
of that little instrument which makes or unmakes 
legislators. Women who feel the grasp of taxation, 
or who personally experience the hurt of some un- 
fair law, are at once led to ask the questions: Who 
make the laws and to whom are lawmakers respon- 
sible ? Since my money helps pay the taxes, since 
my property is disposed of by the law, I want a 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 49 

voice in saying what shall be done with the taxes, 
and in saying who shall make laws to govern me." 
This of course is primarily a selfish interest in the 
law making power, but it is the first interest that 
will be taken by the awakening mind because it 
lies so near the individual and its connec- 
tion is so apparent.* I have known women, who 
scouted the idea of wanting the ballot, very quickly 
converted to an exactly opposite opinion when the 
question of grading streets through their property, 
or of building a new school -house in their ward 
brought the relation directly home to them. 

It takes a higher order of comprehension, a 
higher interest than personal selfishness to make 
women realize and wish for the power to help in 
forming social institutions through a voice in 
making the laws that create and govern them. 
That woman's mental and moral nature is develop- 
ed to some purpose who, following her children out 
from the hearthstone into life, longs for the power 
to help mould the social conditions that surround 
them. What if the mother-heart yearns over 
the neglected children on the streets; over the 
young men who are tempted into saloons ; over the 

* In his essay on "The Progress of Culture" Emerson says: "Ob- 
serve the marked ethical quality of the iunovations urged or adopted. 
The very claim of woman to a political status is itself an honorable 
testimony to the civilization which has given her a civil status new in 
history. Now that by the increased humanity of law she controls her 
property she inevitably takes the next step to her share in power." 



50 THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 

crowds of young girls who labor under the most 
unhealthful conditions; over the suffering and for- 
gotten inmates of hospitals and insane asylums; 
over the still more sadly forgotten inmates of 
houses of correction and prisons; what if she feels 
that there ought to be more of the public money 
spent for educational and eleemosynary institutions 
so that less would be required for the care of the 
criminal classes ? That woman is educated to some 
purpose who observing and thinking on these things 
perceives that the way to render effective all these 
hopes and wishes for the good of humanity is to 
materialize them into effectiveness through the 
possession of that wonderful and delicate instrument 
of power which organizes social institutions, which 
makes or unmakes laws, and which is even more ir- 
resistible than the power of money. Here indeed is a 
field of action for noble women in which they will 
find a satisfaction in the good accomplished for hu- 
manity far beyond that of any material reward. 
The highest activity of which humanity is ca- 
pable and that which brings the richest reward 
is that of being co-worker with the Divine in mak- 
ing better the conditions of human life. And these 
conditions are made better or worse by human 
agency through the exercise of that highest power, 
the power to help make and administer the laws. 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATED WOMEN. 51 

Here will finally be found the noblest field of ac- 
tion for educated women. Men are the most nat- 
ural, the most efficient money-makers of the world; 
women are the most natural the most efficient care- 
takers of society. Education and freedom of ac- 
tion for women; the finding of activities which 
shall worthily correspond to their faculties will 
eventually give us the highest possible conditions 
of organized social life. Fair is the prospect for 
the future of educated women. Youth and maid- 
enhood will be a period of happy, useful, rewarding 
activity; marriage will be elevated to that high 
plane where husband and wife shall each delight 
in the other because both delight in the eternal 
laws. The cares of maternity fulfilled, sons and 
daughters having gone out into life for themselves, 
the richest, the most useful period of the life of 
the educated woman begins. I have only suggested 
its possibilities. Shall I close with this little word 
to my sisters, from the universal poet, Goethe ? 

"Heard are the voices, 
Heard are the sages, 
The worlds and the ages, 

'Choose well, your choice is 

Brief but yet endless; 

Here eyes do regard you 
In eternity's stillness; 
Here is all fulness, 
Ye brave, to reward you. 
Work and despair not.' " 



Men, Women and Money. 



Theseus: My country shall be thine, and there thy state regal. 

Hippolyta: Am I a child? Give me my own and keep for weaker 
heads thy diadems. — Landor. 

In his Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu says "The 
possessor of property is ever possessed of power." 
The truth would pass undisputed without high au- 
thority. 

Probably one of the very strongest forces in the 
world's history is money. 

A contempt for money is no part of the philos- 
ophy of modern society, nor has it ever really 
been of any society since civilization began. As 
stored energy, as a tangible and convertible result 
of labor, it is an ever present force, and it were as 
sensible to entertain a contempt for electricity as 
for money. 

While the interests of men and women are so 
closely interwoven that they might be considered 
as the warp and woof of which society is the fin- 

53 



54 MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 

inished web, and while it is a futile reasoning 
which attempts to treat them as separate races with 
opposing interests, yet their relation to money has 
become so individual and personal that in consider- 
ing it we must necessarily inspect the individual 
strands composing the fabric. 

A glance at the world's history shows the co- 
incidence of the diffusion of power with the dif- 
fusion of property, from the time when all wealth 
was vested in the king, and his subjects were also 
his property, — down through the tribal and patriar- 
chal systems and the varying stages of property 
rights of the heads of families to the present state 
of sole and individual property rights of men. But 
for lack of money kings would have ruled forever; 
and the degree in which men have been able to 
wrest from them the right to control money has 
measured the power which men individually and 
collectively could control. 

Hitherto men have been, and to an overwhelm- 
ing extent still are the earners of money, the bread- 
winners of the world, and consequently the posses- 
sors of its wealth; while women have been the de- 
pendent disbursers and exhibitors of that wealth. 
Comte says: "That man should provide for woman 
is a law of the human race ; a law connected essen- 
tially with the domestic character of woman." 



MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 



Everywhere men toil for money. In grimy mills^ 
in dingy shops and offices, in dark mines, under 
burning suns, on the broad prairies, on the high 
seas, in crowded cities, in the marts of trade, in the 
bank parlors, in the counting rooms, on the wharfs, 
on the streets, are the anxious throngs of men toil- 
ing for money, and if some woman, more often 
two or three, as wife, daughter, mother, is not shar- 
ing the gold he earns the man is not a representa- 
tive man; it is largely true of the man of the pres- 
ent generation that the heart has gone from his 
work if there is no woman on whom he can spend 
the money he has earned. 

Standing on one of the great thoroughfares of 
a great city at the hour in the evening when the 
day's work is over and the crowds of laborers are 
returning to their homes it will be an impressive 
thought, as it is an undoubted fact, that of all this 
toiling throng of men ninety- nine out of every 
hundred have been working all day long for some 
woman and her children. Somewhere is a home 
which he as a man maintains, and in it a woman 
more or less attached to him on whose needs he 
will expend the greater part of what he has earned 
by the sweat of his brow. 

Not that we fail to note also the living stream of 
weary women, young and old, shop girls and sewing 



56 MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 

women, scrubbing women and drudges of every 
description returning from their day's work; but 
these women do not represent the great earning 
power and fortune making forces of society; many 
of them do not earn as much in a week as a labor- 
ing man in a day; they keep from starving, and at 
the best eke out a bare living, but they do not ac- 
cumulate a competence, or ever even dream of a for- 
tune. If in a year from now one of these women is in 
better circumstances in life, with more comforts and 
more money to spend, it will not, in nine cases out 
of ten, be the result of her own exertions, but be- 
cause some man has commenced to earn her living 
for her. Not that woman has not also been the in- 
heritor of the curse of toil with her brother; she 
has equally the curse, but has not yet inherited with 
him the reward of that toil. 

Looking at all the departments of the world's 
work where money is earned, it seems to be a world 
of men. But looking where money is spent the 
actors change and we see a world of women. 

Everywhere, in the crowds of pleasure seekers at 
home and abroad, women largely predominate with 
men enough along to do all the hard work. Women 
fill our excursion steamers on the great lakes, float 
down the broad rivers and swarm at noted pleasure 
resorts; they are the special patrons at home and 



MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 57 

abroad of theatres, concerts and operas. They 
fill our great city dry goods palaces and jewelry 
stores, and all kinds of stores in smaller towns. 
Everywhere that money can buy luxuries, comforts, 
necessaries, there you find woman at her post dili- 
gently doing her duty, spending for man the money 
he has earned. 

This has been the ancient and hereditary rela- 
tion of woman to money since she rose from the 
condition of being a chattel herself. Nor could it 
be otherwise in a less advanced stage of civilization 
than the one which is presently dawning upon us. 
A shuddering glance backward through the world's 
history at woman's relation to society shows that 
relation to have been solely maternal in the bald- 
est, most physical sense so long as man's relation 
to it was mostly warlike. The men whom she 
agonized to bear strew the world's battle-fields; 
and woman, when she did not share with them the 
horrid fortunes of war, wept unheeded over her 
children slain. 

The climax of man's brutality and woman's help- 
lessness is recorded in the words of Napoleon to a 
woman so late as the beginning of this century, 
when his bloody wars had swept from France all 
the flower of her manhood, and the conscription 
was hurrying away to fresh slaughter regiments 



58 MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 

composed of youths of seventeen: "Madame" said 
this only recently unmasked monster, "what France 
needs to-day, is mothers." So long as war was the 
business of mankind it necessarily followed that 
woman's place in the world was a subordinate and 
degraded one; but after the fall of the Roman Em- 
pire came the establishment of the feudal system 
which determined the condition of society in which 
originated any permanent property rights and, 
through them, any stable power for women. 

Man has ever had a tender heart towards his 
daughter, and in such fashion as he could endeav- 
ored to protect her from gross harm in a world 
where he well knew the law of the strongest pre 
vailed, and property in land for women in the form 
of dower-right was speedily engrafted on the feudal 
system. It is more than a coincidence that the 
age of chivalry soon followed and woman ac- 
quired an additional charm in the eyes of her lover. 
This acquisition of property rights was a great 
stride in the advancement of women to a more 
equal place in the society of men. 

John Stuart Mill, in his exhaustive essay on 
the subjection of women, distiDctly states that 
"through ail the progressive periods of human his- 
tory the condition of women has been approaching 
nearer equality with men;" yet he touches but 



MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 



lightly on the advancing property rights and pe- 
cuniary independence of women as an elevating 
power, because, as he says, "institutions, books, 
education, society, all go on training human beings 
for the old long after the new has come, much 
more when it is just coming;" he thus almost 
laughably illustrates his own reiterated statement 
of the impossibility of any man knowing what any 
woman really thinks on most vital questions. It is 
more than probable the wife of John Stuart Mill, 
idolized as she was by her husband, never told him 
how much she hated to ask him for a five pound 
note. 

The money independence of woman has been an 
almost unnoted force in her elevation to anything 
like equal power in the world, but it is one which 
must precede her possession of political power as 
surely as the blade precedes the full corn in the 
ear. 

The possibility of the development of the earning 
power of woman has only just dawned; but the 
alphabet of the new and higher knowledge has been 
learned and full education must inevitably follow. 

It is scarcely three generations since women, 
with very rare exceptions, have even begun 
to try their capacity in the quiet and easily accessi- 
ble fields of the intellectual world, and it is only in 



60 MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 

the present generation that women have developed 
an extreme longing for independence in their re- 
lations to money. It is in this generation that wom- 
an stretches out her hand towards labor and its re- 
wards. Finding that custom and the usages of 
society have barred her from multitudes of avenues 
of money-making enterprises, and lack of education 
and training from many others, she has crowded 
those where she might enter to the point of suffo- 
cation. 

It is a pitiful sight to the lover of humanity to 
look at the records of labor during the last century, 
the painful conditions of which still endure and 
must endure for some time yet. Thousands of weary, 
half -starved women have impaled their lives on the 
point of the needle. Nor has the modern sewing 
machine improved their condition. 

The great army of women teachers we now hive 
always with us, whose ranks are constantly crowded 
with new recruits. The legions of shop-women come 
and go on our streets. Many women are knocking 
at the forbidding looking doors of the professions 
with varying success, and thousands strive to eke 
out a living with the pen. 

Underlying all this effort is the one constant and 
imperious longing not only for the wherewithal to 
sustain life but also for the expression of the fun- 



MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 01 

damental necessity in the lives of the cultivated 
and educated for pecuniary independence ; while at 
the same time the actual condition of things has 
passed into the proverb, "Men make fortunes, 
women make livings." 

Individual property and the tangible reward in 
dollars and cents for the work of her hands and 
her brains has come to be the universal desire of 
the better and more highly educated class of women; 
and although the office of prophet is a cheap one, 
and with little honor, it may safely be assumed 
long enough to say that undoubtedly the superior 
woman of the future will not be supported. 

This desire of woman for independence in money 
matters is but a natural development of her advanc- 
ing position in society from a dependent and infer- 
ior state of childhood and tutelage towards the 
full stature of womanhood and equality with her 
brother. It is a state from which he too has 
formerly emerged, and unless woman is to remain 
in the world of achievement where Darwin has 
placed her in the physical, " an arrested develop- 
ment," she must aspire to this independent posi- 
tion. 

ConcerniDg the unmarried woman, the echo of 
the question, "Is she obliged to?" — meaning, "Can 
not her father or her brother support her ?" — is still 



62 MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 

in the ears of this generation ; and her mother still 
thinks it necessary to say, "She don't work for 
the money but for the pleasure of doing the work." 
All of which is only pitiful nonsense! The pleasure 
of earning, possessing and controlling money is one 
which every thinking woman has long envied her 
brother; and that she should aspire to it as soon as 
possessed of full education follows as surely as effect 
follows cause. 

In this country, in any considerable community, 
may be counted many men, from the millionaire 
down to the man with a competence, who have with 
their own hands and brains and without inherited 
means made their fortunes ; but the only rich women 
are the wives of such men, rich by courtesy, or the 
widows and daughters whose husbands and fathers 
dying left them wealth. A woman who has herself 
made a fortune is a vara avis in any community, al- 
though the women who support themselves are 
legion. 

Self-support is of course the first step on the 
way to competence, and the multitude of women, 
like the multitude of men, will never reach a higher 
plane; but there are women who will undoubtedly 
turn their attention to the accumulation of money; 
who will themselves strive for a home and a com- 
petence, and dream of a fortune. 



MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 63 

No woman who has read Harriet Martineau's de- 
scription of the joy and satisfaction with which she 
took possession of her house and her field, earned 
by herself, but has felt a stirring of the pulses at the 
achievement, an answering thrill and a wish to do 
likewise. 

The home which the Gary sisters made for them- 
selves, and from which they shed the steady light 
of their gentle influence, shines as a star among the 
traditions of literary New York. 

Despite the modern multiplication of boarding 
houses I cannot but believe that the love of a home is 
inherent in woman's nature, and as inseparable from 
it as the instinct of nest building from the nature 
of birds. 

And truly a woman advanced in life, without a 
home and occupation, is a picture without a frame, 
a barren fact which is lacking in the dignity of fit 
surrounding circumstances. A home of her own is 
what every woman craves whose original impulses are 
not vitiated by false aims. If there is a husband in it, 
— ah ! delightful ! but any way, at all events, a home. 

In the vast and ever advancing organization of 
industries, which is one of the phenomena of modern 
life, homes must come to be more and more delight- 
ful places, and the lighter and less cumbrous 
tasks must fall to feminine hands. Whether women 



64 MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 

can ever in great numbers earn more than a bare 
living remains to be seen; but the desirableness uf 
such a state of things cannot be questioned. It is 
undoubtedly true that the unknown quantity in 
every woman's life is marriage; not only in youth 
but up to middle life. It is this which stands as a 
barrier between her and every occupation for which 
years of training are required. Lawyers do not 
want clerks who may only half learn the profession. 
Telegraph operators find it a serious objection to 
teaching a girl that she may marry before she has 
completed her apprenticeship; and so on through 
all the trades and occupations in which men succeed ; 
in fact a woman only seems to increase her chances 
for marriage by going out into the world to make a 
living because of the closer and more frequent re- 
lation in which it throws her with men. Observa- 
tion seems to show that as soon as a girl can make 
a living for herself she is almost sure to marry. 
Aside from other considerations marriage has been 
the shortest way to a competence and other desira- 
ble conditions for women. 

Disraeli, in his novel of Endymion, makes one of 
his young men wish that he were a woman in order 
that he might cut short the weary struggles for ad- 
vancement in the world. Speaking of the years of 
toil which a man starting with nothing must give 



MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 65 

to gain an advanced position in life he contrasts 
them with the lot of a woman in similar circum- 
stances who may meet a fortune and position in the 
drawing room, sit next it once or twice at dinner 
and the next month possess it by marriage. 

It is impossible that ever such a state of society 
should exist that it would be better on the whole for 
a woman's happiness for her to remain unmarried. It 
is true to-day as it always has been that no better 
lot can come to a woman than has come if a good 
man has loved her and she has married him. 

And now the fact that the great majority of women 
are and will always be married women brings us to a 
consideration more especially of the present relation 
of married women to property. 

Without entering into the entangling details of 
the laws in relation to married women and prop- 
erty it is sufficient for our purpose to state that 
broadly speaking, they are at present in most of 
our states in favor of the wife in the event of the 
death of her husband or her divorce from the mar- 
riage relation. But during her married life she 
occupies the same position towards her husband's 
property as her children. 

Most married women's ideas are in a state of 
chaos on the subject of money and property rights. 

Marrying young, usually at an age when men 



66 MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 

could not have made any start in the direction of a 
competence, they are generally dazzled with the 
silly notion that all that is their husband's is theirs; 
which is a most false and pernicious idea of which 
every thinking woman should speedily divest herself; 
for money is no more a condition of the atmosphere 
between two people because they are married than 
it is in the outside world. It is in fact a most indi- 
vidual entity, and resides with one or the other of 
the parties to the contrav. 

Examined into she will find that, beyond purely 
personal expenditures, her property is by all law, 
custom and usage purely one of expectation; a 
doleful waiting for "dead men's shoes," a property 
of which it is a treachery to a beloved husband 
even so much as to think; and by which, so far as 
present control avails, she might as well try to en- 
rich herself as by reading over the accounts of for- 
eign specie imports. She will find herself con- 
fronted with the perplexing paradox, that she has 
only what money she spends, and if she saves it she 
don't have it. Most men resent the wish in their 
wives to have a separate purse or individual accu- 
mulation of property as a reflection on themselves, 
though this feeling is unreasonable and entirely 
one of education and tradition. 

As culture advances this position of married 



MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 67 

women toward the purse becomes more and more 
irksome. Admitting that in the ideally perfect 
marriage the question of money is no question, 
yet, as a wide observer of married life has said, 
most marriages are fragmentary, and since it is so 
it is idle to expect ideal results from imperfect con- 
ditions. In this direction of the money question 
lies a vast, undiscovered domain of sensitive and 
refined misery among otherwise happily married 
women. 

Montesquieu says: "The community of goods .... 
between husband and wife is extremely well 
adapted to a monarchical government because 
women are thereby interested in domestic affairs and 
compelled as it were to take care of their families. 

It is less so in a republic As women are in a 

state that furnishes sufficient inducements to them 
to enter into marriage the advantages which the 
laws give them over the property of their husbands 
are of no service to society." This was written 
nearly three centuries ago and the "sufficient in- 
ducement" then was woman's extreme defenseless- 
ness. It is evident the philosopher never contem- 
plated a state of society in which women would be 
possessed of independent property within the mar- 
riage relation, and consequently possessed of that 
power which he said always belongs to property, any 



MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 



more than he contemplated the existence of such a 
republic as the United States when he says "it is 
impossible republics can long exist except they be 
very small." 

The making of a home and the maternal func- 
tions do not absorb all the energies of married wo- 
men except during a portion of their lives, but 
hitherto there has been no present money value 
to the office" of motherhood; and the business of 
housekeeping, beyond a maintenance, is one of the 
unremunerative industries. 

Yet mankind has ever extolled the office of the 
wife and mother and home maker, placing her ser- 
vices beyond price, and doubtless it is this exagger- 
ated estimate which has silenced her when she 
would ask for her own; but women would be much 
happier to accept a lower estimate for the sake of 
a more tangible reward. 

A man takes care that his wife shall have her 
own when he is no longer able to protect her, and, 
as before stated, in the event of the death of her 
husband the law runs in favor of the wife; but 
dower and many life insurance policies simply 
represent the accumulated and unpaid wages of 
married women; property which comes to her from 
the hand of death which she should have enjoyed 
during her husband's life-time ; that which he should 



MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 69 

have helped her to accumulate and manage as her 
own property, and to enter into which would require 
no process of law and ministry of sorrow. 

Take an ordinary case of two young people com- 
mencing life with a modest sum. Let years and 
prosperity follow: at forty the husband has a home, 
wife, children, an income, and property; his wife, 
with the exception of the children and richer per- 
sonal surroundings, is no better off than she was 
twenty years ago; controls no more money, still 
spends what her husband gives her, and is gen- 
erally extremely ignorant on the subject of the 
proper management of property. She is also in 
the uncomfortable position of a person who spends 
personally, and on whom is spent, ihe most money, 
but who has none to command. It is the position 
of a child and a minor from which the husband, 
the children and the home life all suffer. 

As such a woman goes on toward middle 
life and old age the circumstances are more and 
more depressing, resulting generally in a nar- 
rowing of her whole nature and a painful repres- 
sion of her best impulses. 

Any changes for the better in this condition 
of things must come, first from a changed mode 
of thinking on the part of married women them- 
selves on the subject of property, and than from 



70 MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 

concessions to that change on the part of men. 

Married women must divest themselves of the 
childish notion that their husband's property is 
their own. That is not property which one does not 
control, and it needs only a little thinking to con- 
vince a woman that only in the event of her hus- 
band's death does she really own the vaunted and 
traditional "one third." 

Let her calmly take stock and enquire, "What 
property have I? What do I earn? What is so in- 
disputably my own that without any shadow of 
wronging my husband, I might, if I saw fit, with 
dignity bestow alms upon the beggar whom he dis- 
likes ?" If she finds herself without either money 
or goods, she will at least be a step in advance of 
the fallacy of supposing she has something when 
she has nothing. 

Mill, speaking on a kindred subject, says: "There 
are no doubt women, as there are men, whom equal- 
ity of consideration will not satisfy; with whom 
there is no peace while any will or wish is regarded 
but their own. Such persons are proper subjects for 
divorce. They are fit only to live alone, and no hu- 
man beings ought to be compelled to associate their 
lives with them. But legal subordination tends to 
make such characters among women more rather 
than less frequent. If the man exerts his whole pow- 



MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 71 

er the woman is of course crushed; but if she is 
treated with indulgence and permitted to assume 
power there is no rule to set limits to her en- 
croachments. The law not determining her rights, 
but theoretically allowing her none, practically de- 
clares that the measure of what she has a right to is 
what she can contrive to get." 

This reasoning is particularly applicable to the 
spending of money by married women ; the amount 
of embarrassment a silly and unscrupulous woman 
can cause her husband is incalculable. 

A woman who had nothing when she married, 
and whose services to the married partnership have 
not been worth her maintenance, can, if she choose, 
embarrass a fortune which she neither earned nor 
inherited, and to which she has no just claim. 

It is a case of privileges without corresponding 
obligations, and should give way to the individual 
and independent ownership of property among 
cultivated and refined people. 

Mill further says: "When the support of the 
family depends not on property but on earnings, 
the common arrangement by which the man earns 
the income and the wife superintends the domestic 
expenditures seems to me in general the most suit- 
able division of labor between two persons." 

This is quite true, but there should be a money 



72 MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 

value to both sides in the division of labor, and 
that belonging to the making of a home should be 
paid, not to the man, but to the woman individu- 
ally. 

"In an otherwise just state of things," says the 
same writer, "it is not a desirable custom that the 
wife should contribute by her labor to the income of 
the family, though the power of earning is essen- 
tial to the dignity of a woman if she have not in- 
dependence and proper by." 

But if her labor as the maker of a home receive 
from the family income its just and due reward in 
present possessions without waiting for the hand of 
death to deal out to her a just portion, the making 
of homes would rise to the highest point in the 
scale of occupations for women. 

The best interests of society demand that this 
change shall speedily be brought about. 

Marriage with the advent of children, while it 
can never be to woman the episode merely which 
it is to a man in his life-work, yet by no means oc- 
cupies more than a part of her life; and as "there is 
nothing after disease, indigence and guilt so fatal to 
the pleasurable enjoyment of life as a want of a 
worthy outlet for the active faculties," so to most 
women, as to most men, the management of in- 
dividual property interests would furnish this outlet. 



MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 



"There are abundant examples of men who, after 
a life engrossed by business, retire with a compe- 
tency to the enjoyment, as they hope, of rest; but 
to whom, as they are unable to acquire new interests 
to replace the old, the change to a life of inactivity 
brings ennui, melancholy and premature death. 
Yet no one thinks of the parallel case of so many 
worthy and devoted women who, having paid their 
debt to society — having brought up a family blame- 
lessly to manhood and womanhood, having kept 
house as long as they had a house needing to be 
kept— are deserted by the sole occupation for 
which they had fitted themselves and remain with 
undiminished activity, but with no employment for 
it.". 

As I said before, woman must work out the solu- 
tion of this problem herself. No laws, no legisla- 
tion can help her. 

A woman who is making a home and rearing 
children does her position great injustice in allow- 
ing herself for a moment to think she is supported. 

Beside the sentimental and affectionate partner- 
ship in marriage there should be a money partner- 
ship which should plainly state her individual 
financial condition, and both husband and wife 
should regard with favor the accumulation of her 
individual and separate property side by side with 



74 MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 

his, though perhaps and necessarily much smaller. 
True,there would be more accounts kept, but there 
would be more solid happiness. 

If in the course of time the earning power of 
woman shall approximate more nearly that of man, 
and she can engraft on the occupation of marriage 
and maternity one which shall serve her for that 
part of her life when that occupation shall have de- 
serted her, a state of things will arrive where a 
mature woman can abundantly exercise the per- 
fected powers of glorious womanhood; a state of 
things in which property in the marriage relation 
will be no more entangled than in any ordinary 
business partnership between two persons; a state 
which will lead in time to the desuetude of the 
dower-right. 

When this grand old fortress founded in the feu- 
dal ages by mankind and strengthened by them 
through centuries for the protection of women in 
the marriage relation, much defaced by the con- 
stant attacks of divorce and alimony has become 
an unused refuge and deserted ruin, grown over 
with the moss and ivy of tradition, that will be a 
freer race of women who will contemplate with in- 
terest its ancient, massive walls and deep founda- 
tions. 

Secure in the wider, nobler conditions of inde- 



MEN, WOMEN AND MONEY. 75 

pendent womanhood she will none the less find her 
heart most surely at rest in the sacred relationship 
of marriage with the man of her choice; that one 
human relationship, 

— upon whose tranquil breast 
The heads of little children may securely rest. 



